Travel // Attractions to Avoid // Aquariums and Marine Mammal Parks

Attractions to Avoid

Aquariums and Marine Mammal Parks

The only thing that can be learned from watching depressed animals swim endless circles around chlorinated tanks at aquariums and marine-mammal facilities is that capturing and imprisoning wildlife is wrong. Marine animals such as dolphins, orcas, and belugas are highly gregarious and social in the wild, communicating through vocalizations and maintaining complex social structures. The stress of captivity, however, regularly causes animals confined to tanks to swim largely in silence.

In the wild, dolphins swim up to 100 miles a day, but at most marine parks, they are confined to tanks that may be only 24 feet long, 24 feet wide, and 6 feet deep. The chronic and debilitating stress of captivity weakens dolphins' immune systems, causing them to die earlier than their wild counterparts—even though they are safe from predators and receive regular meals and veterinary care. Dolphins are also particularly susceptible to stress caused by transport. Researchers have discovered that the mortality rates of dolphins increase sixfold immediately after capture or transport and do not return to normal for at least 40 days.

Swimming with dolphins and other aquatic animals is intrusive, dangerous, and stressful for the animals. Boats and swimmers often chase, block, crowd, injure, and scare animals and upset their natural feeding, resting, traveling, and playing behaviors.

Animals in "petting pools" can become injured and anxious as a result of constant poking and prodding from careless human hands, and exposure to bacteria that they are not immune to can cause them to become ill.

Click here to learn more about marine animals.